New to Sway—recording, closed caption, navigation, autoplay and view counts

New to Sway—recording, closed caption, navigation, autoplay and view counts

As written on blogs.office.com
Over the last few months, we’ve been on the ground asking users what features they would like to see in the Sway app. We heard all the ways you use Sway in your personal, school and work lives, and listened to tons of great recommendations on how we could make these experiences even better. As a result of this partnership, we’re proud to announce another round of updates from the Sway team.
Audio recording
The ability to add audio to Sways was the top request from educators—as students and teachers (among others)—love to express their ideas and thoughts in this natural and intuitive way. Now, you can record your voice directly in Sway web app to make your Sway more interactive and engaging.

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For more information on how to record audio in Sway and what browsers support audio recording, please see “Record audio in Sway.”
Closed caption
With the Microsoft mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, we continue to add features to improve accessibility. We are excited to announce that authors can now associate closed caption files with their audio recordings or audio files added from their local drive or OneDrive/OneDrive for Business. Office 365 authors can also associate closed caption files with any video files uploaded from their local drive or from OneDrive for Business.
First, add a new video or audio card to your Sway—by either uploading the content, recording it or adding the content from your OneDrive/OneDrive for Business account—and then expand the card using the Details button. Next, click the Add closed caption button at the bottom of the expanded card and select your closed caption file (.vtt format) and the language it is in.

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When viewing a Sway that has a video with closed captions available, it is easy to simply select the option to turn closed captions on and the language of the closed caption they’d like to see.
Navigation view
Sways are now easier to navigate. Jump back and forth between sections or get a glimpse of the Sway content—all from the new Navigation view.
When you click or tap the Navigation icon (in the bottom-right corner), the Sway fades into the background and the Navigation view appears. Your Sway title, section headers, images and text collectively form an engaging and informative navigation view.
Here’s an example of the Navigation view in the Universe Sway:

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Autoplay
You told us you wanted to automatically play and continuously loop a Sway for unattended cases such as billboards.
We’re happy to announce that, if you have an Office 365 subscription, you can now set your Sway to play automatically! If you are the author of the Sway, use the menu on the top right to go to Settings and turn autoplay on. Additionally, you can autoplay any Sway you are viewing by clicking the Settings gear at the top right-hand corner of the Sway. In the Autoplay settings box, set the delay and then press Start. The Sway will now play automatically.
Once the Sway is playing, you can change the delay, pause or stop playback using the controls on the bottom-right corner.

 

View count
We also heard from our users that they want to know how engaged their audience is with their Sways. Now, authors can see how many people have viewed their Sway. We officially started the view count on March 13, 2017, so if you see “No data,” this means that the Sway has not had any viewers since that date.

We hope you enjoy using the newest features in Sway, and as always, we look forward to your suggestions, feedback and comments on our UserVoice page.

Publish your OneNote Notebooks

Publish your OneNote Notebooks with Office365 and this helpful Sway!

 

Publish your OneNote notebooksDocs.comDocs.com

Working Parents Day

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Working Parents Day

By Kelly Cronin
We asked our Managed Solution Team to send us pictures of what being a working parent really looks like. The response we got was somewhat unexpected, but was well put by our Cloud MarketPlace Manager, Mary Johnson, who said, "I don’t know that these are pictures of what it’s like to be a working parent because I don’t usually have a free hand to take a picture with." And it's true - an estimated 60.6% of families have both working parents. Work-life balance is a difficult task to manage for employees, employers, and their families. At Managed Solution, we have new flexible work arrangements, that give employees the opportunity to work part-time from home and part-time in the office. As a result, our team can have more balance between their work life and their personal life.

Whether it's being there for their first steps, picking them up from their first day of school, or watching their last soccer game, every moment is precious. Take a look at what our working parents treasure and appreciate every day:

Work Like a Dog, With Your Dog

3 new Sway capabilities for Office 365 subscribers

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3 new Sway capabilities for Office 365 subscribers

In the 10 months since Sway’s general availability, we’ve seen great interest in our digital storytelling app, with millions of Sways created to date! We’ve seen music companies, design firms and small businesses use Sway for company presentations, client pitches and employee newsletters. We’ve watched teachers use Sway to advance student learning in dynamic and engaging ways in their classrooms. And Sway has become an easy and enjoyable way to share travel, dining and personal experiences with others.
We make sure to listen to the Sway community and continually add relevant and enjoyable experiences for you. As we work toward this goal, we are excited to release three new features for Office 365 consumer, work and education subscribers based on feedback we’ve heard from you. These features are now available in Sway on the web, and they will roll out to the Sway app for Windows 10 in the coming months.
Add passwords to Sways
Previously, Office 365 work and education customers have been able to limit sharing of Sways at the organizational level, so that only people in your company or school can view your creations. Starting today, all Office 365 subscribers can add an extra layer of privacy by setting passwords for your Sways. This ensures that only people with the password can view your work presentations, school reports or travel journals.

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Enjoy enhanced content limits
We received numerous requests to be able to put more text, photos and other content in your Sways. And our own data shows us that our Office 365 subscribers typically create longer and more robust Sways with higher amounts of videos, tweets and other embedded content. So we’ve worked to increase the content limits for Office 365 subscribers so you can create longer-form works with more multimedia to convey a richer story in the boardroom, the classroom or your home.
Remove the informational footer in Sway
Finally, we’re enabling all Office 365 subscribers to remove the informational footer at the end of your Sway to help you achieve a more polished look. You can now tap the Share icon and uncheck the Show Sway branding in this Sway checkbox to create a more professional look for your creations.

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The Sway team is excited to provide ongoing value to our Office 365 subscribers and will continue adding new, exclusive Sway features over time. To learn more about monthly updates released across the Office apps for Office 365 subscribers, check out the New to Office 365 in June blog post.

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The Best Mother's Day Gift is a Skype Call

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By Kelly Cronin, Marketing Intern

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National Teacher Appreciation Day: Technology in Education

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Celebrate the teacher you love with some cool educational tech! education.microsoft.com

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Sway: 4 Steps to Make Earth Day Matter with Office365

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Sway and photos by Kelly Cronin, Marketing Associate

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